Technology Resources for Teaching Writing?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on May 27, 2010 at 4:59pm

How would you like to have your students help HS students in Morocco who want to improve their English proficiency. Some students learn best by teaching. Let me know if you are interested.

Bob

Permalink Reply by Katherine Schutte on May 27, 2010 at 8:51pm

Mike or Bob -- I teach high school English, and I've done a lot in the past year with blogging. Would love to connect with other classrooms. We are currently on summer break, but that provides ample time for setting up partnerships! Just finished my master's thesis on blogging across the curriculum, and blogging has some great benefits. Please let me know if you're interested.

Permalink Reply by Mike Tokarczyk on May 28, 2010 at 6:35pm

Bob - I would like to find out more about this opportunity. I agree that students learn best by teaching, and I think connecting my students with students in Morocco would make it a unique learning opportunity with "real world" appeal.

Katherine - I also used a little blogging in my 9th grade classroom this year. I used Blogger, and I had a pretty positive experience with it, but I think connecting with another class would be great! I am also about to start my summer break (gotta love having summers off). I'm definitely interested!

Permalink Reply by Katherine Schutte on May 28, 2010 at 7:09pm

Great! We used Blogger as well, so I envision the same for next year. I teach in a freshman academy, meaning I team with social studies, science, and math in teaching the same 120 students. We blogged every other week on the theme "co-existence" as they saw it play out in their English, science, social studies, and math classes. We are also implementing a technology grant next year that will have students working on problem-based learning opportunities, which I'm assuming we'll intertwine with the blogs. What do you consider to be your overall goals with blogging? Will students each maintain his/her own blog? To what end do you envision the exchange of ideas? Let's keep talking.

Permalink Reply by Mike Tokarczyk on May 31, 2010 at 4:33pm

My overall goals with blogging? Hmmm... Well, at the very least, I'd like to expose my students' writing to an audience beyond the peers that they are sitting with in the same computer lab.

Over the course of the school year, my ninth graders have covered 4 major essays: a Narrative, a Response to Literature/Literary Analysis, a Business Letter, and an Informational/Research Essay. The language arts department in my building is having a meeting this week to discuss ways to improve our overall approach to writing. My school district is experiencing quite a bit of growth, and will continue to do so over the next several years. As a department, we have found that each language arts teacher is doing his/her own thing in terms of writing. Blogs, though very useful in terms of connecting students to an authentic audience, is a type of writing task that NONE of the other language arts teachers have even considered. After just completing my masters degree in ed. tech., I feel it is my duty to get my students and my department on board with the up and coming forms of technology that will become more and more commonplace in education. The bottom line is - I would like to do something different. I'm sure there is a way that I can meet many of the objectives of the "required" types of writing by making good use of Blogger.

I suppose I will have more information after my meeting this week, but I'd like learn more about your "co-existence" assignment and what kind of results you experienced. I'd also like to know more about your teaching background and area of certification. Aside from this blogging assignment, do you teach any other forms of writing? I'm certified 7-12 in integrated language arts with a reading endorsement. I am just finishing my 7th year of teaching, all have been 9th and 10th grade language arts. Anyways, we should keep talking as you said and see if there's something we can come up with for the 2010-2011 school year. Take care!

Permalink Reply by Debbie J Bell on June 11, 2010 at 8:19pm

Have you considered having students post their required writings on line in a blog and allowing peers to react to them with some sort of rubric or a series of guided questions? We did this type of submission and review between 12th graders and a college class.

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on May 29, 2010 at 9:48am

The Summer break is a good time for planning as Katherine said.

I direct the Enabling Support Foundation, a non-profit with dual missions to support persons with disabilities and K-12 education. ESF has a staff all of whom have been involved with education. and have a philosophy that leans heavily to accommodation to specific needs ranging from more time allowed to accommodation to learning styles. The goal is to maximize the potential of everyone. ESF has been de facto accepted outside the US. We have multiple ongoing programs in Morocco and Pakistan. ESF is also in the early stages of developing the Archive of Myth and Legend. Imagine what we will have built. Children from around the world publish media that is indexed in the Archive.

Mike and Katherine if you are interested I will introduce you to the ESF people and explore how classes could collaborate.
If you have special needs children, you have come to the right place.

What are your thoughts?